Some people call high school a four-year slog. Yet at Lakeside it can often feel more like a four-year sprint…where everything is on the line. 

In the fall of 2023, I was a 14-year-old brand-new Lakesider. I felt both deeply proud and deeply fortunate to have managed to get into such a prestigious school, surrounded by the most incredible students I’d ever met.

This school was foreign to me, but I wasn’t naïve (except maybe in thinking that the Allen-Gates water fountains could be trusted). I knew that stepping foot on this campus would bring a myriad of challenges to overcome. I was especially aware of imposter syndrome, which I thought of as a sort of hazy phantom that might waft out from the Bliss bell tower and hang over me, whispering You don’t belong here in my ears. I promised myself that I would never let that monster get to me.

And it didn’t, exactly. But monsters can take other forms. As the year wore on, I became painfully aware of three things:

1.     By “winning the race” to Lakeside, I’d simply gotten myself an entry into another race, this one twice as intense as the last: the race to college.
2.     I was in the company of a seemingly bottomless catalogue of club leaders, science Olympians, future non-science Olympians, math whizzes, musical prodigies, incredible journalists, and other brilliant people whose achievements are too many and too varied to list here.
3.     These were the people I was racing against.

And it was that third thing that, one day, made me feel no longer purely fortunate to be in this company. Instead, I felt scared. 

Comparison began to quite literally keep me up at night. Every time I heard about some amazing thing a peer had done, whether it was a friend or an acquaintance or someone I barely knew, something twisted deep down in my stomach even as I heartily congratulated them. All my dreams felt further away. I wasn’t doing enough, I thought. How could I ever measure up? Soon I became internally frustrated with people around me for even sharing their accomplishments. How dare they lead me to feel like I was behind?

There’s a fine line between fear and resentment. 

When sophomore year arrived, this comparison grew increasingly pervasive. It extended beyond extracurriculars and into the classroom: She got two percent more on the English essay than I did? No! I’m supposed to be the writing person. I would have these thoughts unironically, directed at people who I consider inspiring students and good friends. Then I would berate myself furiously for being so selfish…but also for failing to outperform whoever was the focus of my comparison that day. 

There’s a fine line between resentment and shame. 

To ease my aches, I started doing more things. Journal submissions, writing programs, anything I could do to make myself feel better about where I was at. And that was all well and good, but here’s what wasn’t: I felt the irresistible urge to blather any and all of those achievements wherever I could. I casually (but intentionally) dropped them into conversation, making sure to reference the program, the work, the challenge. I took pleasure in the recognition in my peers’ eyes, the small nods I received. I’m racing you, now, I thought.

Today I know that this strategy doesn’t work. All it ever did was push me deeper into a cycle of constantly trying to judge the relative value of my achievements. But it felt like the only way to soothe this horrible urge to compare, compare, compare. After all, who else could I go to? I was alone in this feeling, wasn’t I?

But I wasn’t. And it was only last month that I really began to understand that truth. 

I recently had the experience, in Drama III, of being asked an unusual check-in question: What’s your problem? I thought my class would share pet peeves or minor annoyances. Yet somehow, it turned into an outpouring of frustration with that uniquely Lakeside feeling of constantly being behind your peers, of being overshadowed, of resenting people when your soul wants to cheer them on. I was shocked to find that I wasn’t the only one who’d had this experience. In fact, it seemed everyone had.

Since then, Lucy T. ’27, a GOA psychology student and my Drama III classmate, has run a poll trying to better understand comparison at Lakeside. Here’s what she found:

Over sixty percent of respondents reported feeling like they were not doing enough extracurriculars relative to those around them. 

Forty-five percent of respondents said that they “almost always” compare their grade percentages with those of their peers. 

Thirty-five percent said that they feel somewhat or very resentful when a peer gets a higher grade than them.

And ninety-three percent agreed or strongly agreed that comparison is “inherent and inevitable” in Lakeside’s campus culture. 

The numbers speak for themselves. 

The root cause of this comparison culture is unclear, but I think it’s an unfortunate consequence of this school’s purpose. At the end of the day, Lakeside is designed to help its students “succeed” in the context of American capitalism. It’s very telling that Dr. Laurie Santos’s assembly speech got the biggest reaction when she said that “happy people make more money.” American capitalism is inherently a system of competition. Because of that, our very high school careers can become a race to gain the attention of the best universities, in order to gain the respect of the best employers, in order to gain the most money. 

But no matter its origins, comparison culture is a significant threat.

After all, Lakeside prides itself on its community; comparison culture puts that Lion bond at risk. It doesn’t just impact us internally. It impacts our relationships, the way we view our friends and peers.

So as a first step of many, here’s what I’m asking myself and you to do:

1.     Be honest with those around you. Tell your peers how much they truly inspire you—and focus on them. Recognize them without taking their works as a point scored against you. 
2.     Be honest with yourself. Sometimes it may not feel like you are doing enough to keep up, but it is crucial to applaud yourself for the work you do: small things as much as large ones, personal achievements as much as public ones.
3.     View high school not as a sprint—or a slog—but as a journey. Your path is your path, and nothing anyone else does can diminish that. So instead of judging yourself by your friend’s internship or your classmate’s test grade, race only against yourself. 

They say comparison is the thief of joy, but we as a community have the power to chase this particular phantom right back to its home deep inside the bell tower. That starts today.